by Ja.W. Smith

Created on: August 31, 2011   Last Updated: September 24, 2011

Lost the Lawn

When most gardeners plant seeds, they do so with the idea that the seeds and subsequent plants will stay put—not run away. At least that’s what we thought when we tried to plant a new lawn at my dad’s rural property in Texas.

Mom and Dad had built the house a few years earlier, at one end of several acres of land, where they would board and pasture a few horses and some cattle. The land sat a couple miles down a nearly private road, hidden behind a border of pine forest, from which various types of wildlife would venture out on a regular basis. Deer, wild boar, and even the occasional cougar made an appearance from time to time. Most of the time the animals came for a drink from a little run-off stream that somehow managed to flow along the property throughout the year, no matter how hot and dry especially the summers chose to be.

My brother and I had mostly been helping my mom with her small vegetable garden one hot summer, in particular. By the end of the season, we’d picked it pretty clean of any food items and about the only things left were a few blooms of weeds. Once we pulled those, we knew Dad would have us working and really working up a sweat landscaping around the house, which he’d been Mom that he’d do, ever since the house was finished. The heat still hovered around 100 degrees and the entire county couldn’t seem to shake the dry spell of absolutely no rain for the last two months. Needless to say, we were taking our time with those weeds.

Oddly not procrastinating, Dad had been gearing up for some time to get started on the landscaping. His promises to Mom were stacking up and he ran out of ways to dodge her prodding. Despite his recent trips to the hardware store for seeds and other planting sundries, as well as a tune-up for his riding mower, we all knew him to be a pretty good procrastinator, who was equally good at watching his big-screen TV and taking afternoon naps, not long after a brunch. Many times, as he lay asleep on the couch, my brother and I joked in the next room about taking an electric hair trimmer to his head and leave him with bald paths. We’d giggle at the thought of him looking like Mr. T with thinning grey hair, and all in good fun, we’d pity the fool!

In the end, Dad still worked when he had to or when suddenly struck with the motivation and male prowess to do so. It just happened to be one of those times and Dad decided to seed the lawn that

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